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June 30, 2008

The New York Times: Now 33% as Coherent as Dick Cheney!

Dick Cheney  and the New York Times have one thing in common:  both have  opinions about  the latest version of  Bush’s  North Korea policy: Cheney froze, according to four of the participants at the Old Executive Office Building meeting. For more than 30 minutes he had been talking and answering questions, without missing a beat. But now, for several long seconds, he stared, unsmilingly, at his questioner, Steven Clemons of the New America Foundation, a public policy institution. Finally, he...
Categories Appeasement/Media Criticism/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/WMD
March 13, 2008

“On the Border”

Today, on Capitol Hill, I had a chance to see an excerpt of that Chosun Ilbo documentary on human trafficking in North Korea. As my friend had said, it does indeed depict drug smuggling. One smuggler is actually interviewed on night vision, just as he emerges from the freezing Tumen River with a load of drugs he is smuggling into China. His source? His brother, a soldier, who is pilfering from a state pharmaceutical factory in Nampo. I wasn’t able...
Categories Drugs & N Korea/Human Trafficking/Media Criticism
February 29, 2008

Do Not Resuscitate

You know it’s time for Plan B when even the New York Times deems Plan A comatose. The concert would have had even more significance if it could have celebrated continuing progress toward shuttering North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. That effort unfortunately has stalled, and the fault — at least this time — is undeniably Pyongyang’s. [….] North Korea has said it would produce the accounting, but first it wants Washington to remove it from the list of state sponsors...
Categories Diplomacy/Media Criticism/Six-Party Talks
February 7, 2008

U-Tubed, Part 4

Commenter ChosunHapa was kind enough to  drop  some links to Chris Hill’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on  Wednesday (transcript / video).  Hill says that the “disablement” of (some of) North Korea’s nuclear facilities is proceeding well, contrary to what other reports tell us.   He also assures us of his grave concern about Japanese abductees and human rights … which we’ll pursue on a separate track of course, after  Kim Jong Il has what he wants from us....
Categories Diplomacy/Media Criticism/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
January 25, 2008

Kevin G. Hall’s Counterfeit Journalism (Updated)

[Update 28 Jan 08:   I’m going to keep flogging this story until I’ve corrected the record.  A reader (thank you)  directs me to this Bloomberg story by none other than Bradley K. Martin and Hideko Takayama.  This one is second only to Steven Mihm’s  for  the quality of its  investigative reporting.  If you’ve read Martin’s book, you’ll  already know  that he’s no neocon collapsist, to say the least.    Takayama and Martin interviewed Yoshihide Matsumura, “whose Matsumura Technology Co....
Categories Counterfeiting/Media Criticism/Money Laundering
December 17, 2007

Iraq Phantom Count

Jim  Gateway Pundit  raises serious questions about the accuracy of  no less than six recent mass casualty reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, including some that appear to have been  manipulated by the enemy.  The significance of this does not end with the fact that we can’t believe the news that’s reported, because in a democracy, the quality of our public policy decisions is only as good  as the quality of  our news.  Our media  have become accomplished at resisting perceived...
Categories Media Criticism/Terrorism/Iraq
July 14, 2007

If Jack Pritchard Doesn’t Believe Jack Pritchard, Why Should We?

Jack Pritchard probably comes to his role as South Korea’s  main policy mouthpiece honestly,  through a shared  belief that the next ten years of unrequited aid really will change North Korea into a peaceful, bucolic, union-free garment  district.  Pritchard is President of the Korea Economic  Institute, which  works  Washington’s Korea-watching and policy-making crowds through its regular sponsorship of social and academic dinner  events.  I’ve been to a few myself, and though I seldom agree with  what I hear there,  the...
Categories Media Criticism/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics/Washington Views/WMD
June 10, 2007

Charles J. Hanley Hunts for New Atrocities

I couldn’t help but feel dismay when I say the byline on this story.  Remember  this guy?  I would not have even looked for the byline, asking myself who wrote this crap,  had I not seen this passage: In eastern Baghdad, a U.S. helicopter fired flares on a crowd on a square, hours after clashes between American troops and Shiite militia that left at least five people dead. The military said the flares were part of an automatic self-defense system....
Categories Media Criticism/Terrorism/Iraq
June 7, 2007

True, But Would It Sell Papers?

At the Marmot’s Hole, R. Elgin notes that the Korean press is trying to  make foreigners the scapegoats for  South Korea’s drug problems.  I agree with R. Elgin.  The article notes a “huge increase” in drug smuggling into Korea, and then proceeds  to  indirectly blame Americans, Canadians, and Chinese for it.  Prosecutors believe the rising number of American drug offenders correlates to a rising number of English teachers coming to Korea, prompted by the recent trend for English education. The...
Categories Drugs & N Korea/Korean Society/Media Criticism
June 3, 2007

How to Leave North Korea, and How Not To

*   There’s a right way and a wrong way to do everything.  See also related posts at DPRK Studies. *   As much as I’d like to see this Yonhap story as evidence of more cultural infiltration of North Korea by the South, it seems more like an example of the opposite.  In what must have been a very carefully guided and choreographed tour of a P’yang department store, a clerk is wearing earphones, is predictably asked why, and...
Categories Defectors/Media Criticism/Refugees
April 8, 2007

Some Questions for David Albright (Which He Won’t Answer)

[Some Background for new readers:   When the U.S. and North Korea  signed a denuclearization agreement on February 13th, one of the major unresolved issues was the question of North Korea’s suspected uranium enrichment program.   When U.S. diplomats confronted the North Koreans in 2002 with  evidence  suggesting the existence of  that program, North Korea admitted, in effect, that it had a program and “so what of it?”  The United States then declared North Korea in violation of the Agreed Framework of...
Categories Media Criticism/WMD
March 19, 2007

Anju Links for 3/19

*    Radio Megumi.  An international body has granted Japan  permission to increase broadcasts into North Korea.  The broadcasts will be directed  at a small audience:  its abducted citizens.  I tend to think that Japan would see them home again sooner if it broadcast words of dissent and subversion to the North Korean people. *   Short-Selling Appeasement.   Japan now stands alone in standing up to the North Koreans in Beijing:  not one Yen until you give us back...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Drugs & N Korea/Japan & Korea/Media Criticism/NK Economics/Terrorism/Iraq
March 5, 2007

‘Inside North Korea’ Tonight: Don’t Miss This One

A reader reminds me:  National Geographic Explorer is airing a special tonight at 9 p.m., “Inside North Korea.”  This program, done by Lisa Ling while traveling undercover, is not going to be the standard guided tour we’ve come to expect from the networks.   Do yourself a favor and read NGEO’s teaser.  This one looks good. Update:   It is good.  Channel 109 on Comcast. Update 2:   This was definitely one of the best NK docus I’ve seen, if for...
Categories Deprogramming/Inside NK/Media Criticism
March 1, 2007

Why You Have to Read this Blog: Yonhap Gets Lefkowitz’s Testimony Wrong

Standing amid a crowd of journalists today, a thought entered my mind at such velocity that it shattered  a tumor of remorse forming around the idea that any of them has a thousand times my audience.  True, I thought.  But unlike them,  every word I write will be published.  Oh, the power!   It fills and swells my cranium!   And no sooner do I see the stories they’ve filed, the frustrated resignation hits me all over again.  Because they’re...
Categories Activism/Human Rights/Media Criticism/Uncategorized/Washington Views
February 22, 2007

Richardson on David Albright: Put Me Down for “C”

Update:   Albright has published  his views here  in slightly more detail, and I’m even less persuaded than I was before.  Albright completely mischaracterizes the HEU evidence by ingoring  evidence he can’t refute (North Korea’s admissions, Musharraf’s admissions, Libya) and arguing as if all of our  evidence consisted of a receipt for  aluminum tubes we’d found in A.Q. Khan’s lint filter.   The key point  about aluminum tubes  is that they’re  used to make gas centrifuges to enrich uranium.  I’ve never...
Categories Appeasement/Media Criticism/Six-Party Talks/WMD
February 21, 2007

We’d All Love to See the Plan

The Korea Times tells us that the South Korean Justice Ministry, having felt the weight of criticism, has a new plan to protect the human rights of North Koreans.  It then proceeds to tell us absolutely nothing about  the plan  or provide a link to it (nothing on the MOJ site, either).  Now I  remember why I quit reading the Times.  Anyway, if it’s anything like the Human Rights Commission’s plan, I doubt  we’re missing much.
Categories Human Rights/Korean Law/Media Criticism